ACP highlights value of easing administrative tasks at HHS meeting

Tom Price

At a meeting held by HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD, to examine the impact of government requirements on the clinician-patient relationship, ACP emphasized the importance of reducing excessive administrative tasks, according to a press release.

Earlier this year, ACP published a position paper reinforcing its “patients before paperwork” initiative, which provides a framework to guide physicians in evaluating administrative tasks and offers several recommendations to alleviate or eliminate their adverse effects on physicians, their patients and the health care system.

ACP strongly advocated for the removal of history and examination requirements from the 1995 and 1997 Evaluation & Management guidelines at the meeting, according to the release.

However, Michael S. Barr, MD, MACP, senior vice president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance and member of the ACP Medical Informatics Committee said, “[ACP] recommends that the medical decision-making portion of [these] guidelines be retained and tied to program integrity. Specialty societies would work with [CMS] to create documentation frameworks specific to each specialty based on key principles to support health care instead of accounting.”

“Documentation must support caring for the people who entrust their lives to us,” he added. “We must move away from the mindset that documentation equals reimbursement.”

“Clinical documentation in electronic health record systems must support clinicians’ cognitive processes during the documentation process and provide all who engage in the care of a patient access to accurate, concise information upon which they can rely and use,” he said.

In addition, ACP recommended that chronic care management services be designated as “additional preventive services” and be accessible through Medicare Part B’s waiver authority of the Social Security Act to abolish any beneficiary copayment, according to the release.

“This recommendation is also related to improving care,” Brian Outland, ACP’s director of regulatory affairs, said. “Many Medicare beneficiaries with complex conditions — high-need, high-cost individuals — are not benefiting from chronic care management services that we know are associated with better quality and lower cost. This is in large part because of the 20% copay requirement.”

Price did not indicate when HHS will react to the recommendations, but he noted the value of working with stakeholders.

Disclosure: Barr and Outland are employees of ACP.